


The things we teach our children

by Sergia



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Regret
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 13:11:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1227634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sergia/pseuds/Sergia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"To a father growing old nothing is dearer than a daughter" - Euripides</p><p>I went on a quote-binge and finally managed to write down some of the things that bother me about the Pond family dynamic after LKH and the Ponds' farewell especially</p><p>Part one: Rory regrets</p>
            </blockquote>





	The things we teach our children

**Author's Note:**

> Assuming Amy found Rory in 1938 New York and that the interactions between them and River we saw were typical for their relationship.
> 
> If you haven't seen seasons 6 or 7 there are spoilers everywhere!

_“Regret for the things we did can be tempered with time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable”_ – Sydney J. Harris

 

It still hasn’t quite sunk in. Anthony has been with them for two weeks now, but still Rory can’t quite believe it. That little bundle in the cot is their son. He’s held him and smelled him and has had his puke on his shoulder.

He’s _theirs_.

“He still won’t let me hold the bottle,” Amy says softly and he can hear the uncertainty in her voice.

“His parents abandoned him and the orphanage was so full – he’s learned to feed himself.” Amazingly, his voice doesn’t waver.

The silence that settles between them is heavy until Amy gently bumps his shoulder and sniffles. “He’s barely three months old, I didn’t think it would matter, y’know?”

He does. But then he had known, through his studies and from studying the adoption process in their time. He’d never thought the knowledge would come in handy quite in this way, but it is what it is. It’s 1941 now, more than forty years before he will be born. America is gripped by the second World War and if you asked him to, he’d be unable to describe exactly how incredibly odd it is to live amongst the propaganda and zeitgeist they studied in school, over half a century from now.

In the end, the future is another hallway with doors in his head. Sometimes he wonders how they’ve not gone bat shit-crazy from all the lives and impossibilities and losses in their heads.

And here’s Anthony. Their son. And for the past two weeks, every single time he’s looked at the little boy he’d been filled with joy and hope. But not today, today his mind is elsewhere. A door swung open and he can’t bring himself to shut it.

He remembers the battle, the bloodshed, the Doctor’s trickery. But mostly he remembers another child held in his arms. A false child, but she’d felt so real, so alive.

He’d never properly thought about it. After their failed attempt to rescue Melody, they’d been so desperate to find her they hadn’t properly grieved, hadn’t really let themselves think or talk about what had happened, or how, or why.

When it’d became clear that they would never get their daughter back; that she’d already grown up alongside them but nevertheless without her parents, it had been easier to focus on the adventures and later on, on trying again.

Now it’s killing him.

His daughter and he failed her. Never kept her safe. Never told her he loved her.

River Song was a force of nature, confident and clever and more than capable of taking care of herself. He’d never properly stopped to consider that none of that mattered. Every child needed – deserved – to be loved. If being in an orphanage for two months had already left scars on little Anthony, what scars did River carry?

God he’d been so selfish!

A punch to his upper arm breaks him out of his thoughts and he finds his wife staring at him with wide, concerned eyes. “You okay there, Roman?”

“Just thinking,” he hedges.

“What about?”

 _Nothing_. It’s on the tip of his tongue. But no, Melody will never be nothing to him. He can’t tell Amy though. She’s done better in this time period than he’d thought – better without her Raggedy Man than he’d thought. But every time they’re reminded of their old life she clams up.

So he presses a kiss to her temple and tells a half-truth. “They’ll gain a lot of insight into children’s mental and emotional development in the next couple of decades. Right now most caregivers simply don’t realize how much of an impact being abandoned at such a young age can have.” They were fools to ever have believed River’s miracle recovery. God, why didn’t he _think_?!

“But he’ll be okay, right?”

Unable to get a word past the lump in his throat, he nods.

“Because he has us now,” Amy resolves, lips thinning in a determined line. His heart aches because it reminds him of River. River unwavering in the face of the Doctor’s wrath. River strong and brave when she told him of her greatest fear. He hadn’t even known then. She had told him of how, from her perspective, the Doctor was slowly forgetting her and he hadn’t realized (couldn’t have, really) that the same had already happened to her parents.

They had so much in common and he’d never realized until it was too late. Both soldiers against their will, forgotten by their spouses, killers of their better halves.

“Rory?”

His eyes sting.

“You’re crying.”

He shakes his head violently.

Amy’s hand is cool where she lays it against his cheek, her voice thin and wavering when she pleads, “happy tears?”

Three years they’ve been here. Three years since he’s seen her. After Amy found him, after they’d snuck into an abandoned house, stuck in the past with no possessions other than the clothes on their backs and credit cards that wouldn’t work for another sixty years, there’d been a gift waiting for them.

Amy had noticed the painting first. A replica of Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers and wasn’t that the oddest thing considering the rest of the house had been stripped. _Never ignore a coincidence_. Sure enough, on the back of the painting they found a Tardis-blue envelop. “I knew it!” Amy had exclaimed. “Thank you Raggedy Man!”

But the letter inside was signed by River. The estate set up in their names founded by Melody Williams. And for the first time in three years he can’t stop himself from uttering her name to his wife. “Melody.”

Immediately Amy freezes as if he slapped her. “She’s fine,” she says at length, “River is strong. Of course she’s fine.”

He should agree and drop this because Amelia Pond is strong and brave but not when it comes to facing past regrets. He should agree for her sake, but he can’t. “We never gave her a choice, did we? We never allowed her to be anything but strong – never taught her that it’s okay to not be fine.”

“Rory…”

But he can’t stop and the words rush out of him, flying through the room like shards of glass. “We told her to be brave and strong on Demon’s Run, on that pyramid. Told Mels to grow up and take care of herself. Left her behind when we gallivanted all over the universe. My daughter – _ours_ – and I never got to hold her, never told her that I love her, that she didn’t have to be brave all the time. Just another door in my head.” He wants to vomit, or hit something, preferably both.

“We didn’t know. Rory, we didn’t! And when we did…”

“When we did we ran away! Set an extra plate at the table for him, but not for her, did we? Damn it, Amy! How could I have… why didn’t I…” It’d feel better if the words he can’t say would just rip his oesophagus open. The pain would be deserved. He shut little Melody behind a door in his head, bought River Song’s lies and façade and refused to see what was right in front of him. He should have known better! “She deserved – Anthony deserves – I’m a failure.”

Tears are streaming down his cheeks now and he’s made Amy cry too. Stupid, _stupid_ Rory.

“I should have kept her safe, but she kept me safe instead. I should have spent time with her, but we spent more time with her husband – hell, the Doctor spent more time with us than he did with her. What do you think she took away from that? Look at him!” He jabs an accusing finger at their son. “Three months old and he’s learned not to cry because no one will come, learned to hold his own bottle because no one will do it for him. What did we teach her, Amy? I don’t care how strong and brave she is or how grown up – what did I teach her?”

He needs to stop this, stop hurting his wife just to selfishly expel some of the anguish inside.

And yet he answers his own question. “We taught her that she didn’t matter. That we’d rather be with him. I taught my own daughter that she wasn’t good enough for us, that she had to brave and strong because her parents wouldn’t be there to catch her when she fell. I never told her… never showed her…”

“Rory, please stop this.” Amy eyes are like glass, her skin so pale and she’s shaking – he can almost see her crack under his words and he wants to splinter too. He’s a rubbish father. At least Amy had been her friend. She and Mels had been joined at the hip and she’d known River longer than he had, had made more of an effort before they learned the truth.

He blinks at her. “You got to say goodbye.” He grabs her shoulders and stares into her eyes, hopeful. “Tell me you told her. Amy, please!”

“I…”

“Tell me!”

“I’m sorry.” She breaks away from him, burying her face in her hands and hiccupping painfully trying not to cry and Rory… he can’t…

“What did you tell her?”

In between broken sobs she answers, crushing his last hope, “to be – brave and s-strong and take c-care of him. I didn’t – didn’t even tell her good-goodbye. Just him. I’m sorry, Rory, I’m so sorry.”

Behind them Anthony begins to cry. The sound is so unfamiliar still it shocks both of them into silence.

Amy meets his eyes briefly, uncertainly, before stepping over to the cot. He can read the hesitation in her frame as she reaches down for their baby and carefully picks him up. Thus far Anthony hasn’t been overly fond of being held and has cried relatively rarely for a baby. All symptoms of his neglect. But now his little fingers quickly grab onto Amy’s jumper as he wails his little heart out.

Little Melody never got this kind of comfort, Rory thinks grimly and he’s not even sure if River ever did. He failed her on so many levels and until now he’s never had the decency to properly regret it. Oh he’d had regrets, had cried after she’d been taken, had skirted talking with her about her childhood. But he’d never really tried, had never told her, had never let himself think of the consequences – he’d never truly felt she was his daughter.

If he could talk to her – see her one more time, he’d wrap his arms around her and not let her go until he told her over and over again that he loved until there was no doubt in her mind. But he’s pretty sure that if there was a way for them to see each other again, River would have found it by now.

He raises his eyes to Amy, who approaches him with Anthony nestled in her arms. Her eyes are red and puffy, but there’s a small smile on her lips. Anthony’s little face is beet red from crying. He feels so raw he can barely stand to look at them.

“Melody turned out okay,” Amy says firmly. “However much or little we had to do with it, she survived and I think she was happy for the most part.”

“Not enough.”

“It has to be. She turned into a brilliant woman and I refuse to believe she got it all from Kovarian. We made her and she is our daughter. It kills me that we couldn’t be better parents to her, but we can be for him. We can tell him we love him every day. We can make sure he feels safe with us, that he grows into a confident, clever and kind man. And we can tell him how strong and brave his sister is. Rory, we can’t change the past – no matter how much the Doctor likes to think otherwise – but we can learn and do better this time. For Anthony _and_ for Melody.” She looks at him with such conviction he can almost breathe again. “Now get your stupid face over here and give us a hug.”

And so he does.

_“Every word, facial expression, gesture or action on the part of the parent gives the child some message about self-worth. It is sad that so many parents don’t realize what messages they are sending”_ – Virginia Satir


End file.
